Solar Flare
by Aurora-Borealis Coyote
Summary: "You were right...but so was I." Ishvalan war-era, insane!Riza


**Not exactly sure how I feel about this but it was interesting to write.**

**Warnings- rather disturbing depictions of a mental breakdown going on here. **

The desert is a terrible place but there are reasons why that is, and you suppose you'll stay where you fit. Common sense, clean lines and definite thoughts Even when you leave there will still be sandstorms and gunshots inside of you. When you step away from places where you both lose and make yourself you can never really be free. That's the price. They call it equivalent exchange but you don't suppose it's always equivalent- where that name come from, you don't know. You never will- or maybe not.

Maybe if you close your eyes you'll still see the little red pinpoints in bold circles like price labels at an auction, bidding for a few more steps forward. Like you always do. Maybe if you keep touching the right places the gunmetal will become a part of your hand so inseparable you don't notice when it goes off. Maybe if you try to never sleep you won't lie awake in the sand like you're waiting for it to accept you as a sacrifice. You've lost track of how many times you've done it, though. There are an infinite amount of numbers to count and it's got to be one of then- what's a few, give or take? You'll still come out of it more or less the same or less and less and less-

After a while once you begin to understand it- really understand it- it isn't so repetitive. And you learn that if you can't just go through with the motions then you know where not to go- but you do anyway.

The sun blazes, lurid and overheated, as if it can't deal with all that fire but it has to, you know, or else it would end up destroying everything around it and that can't happen- the sun is the sun and the earth is the earth, people will destroy with their hands and minds and they don't need a reminder in the sky to hang over them, not when they already revolve around it-

The slick sound of a fire starting and the raging desperate breeze of one person's screams stopping abruptly. You remember being on the other side of the door waiting, would it be your turn to die or your call to go on. But now you're not on any side.

You open your mouth, and your dried lips crack apart. As if you hadn't been using them- isn't that strange, no, nothing is anymore, you can see each grain of sand is stained a different shade of blood, now you can tell the difference between a rut and a grave and you may as well be in the deeper one but you've gone so deep, so low, so inside that you can understand now- your soul twists into what it either always was underneath or what it's been made into by your pressing finger and watchful eyes, companion and guardian and enemy to yourself, watching your back like a wound and a weapon- one day if you keep up you can take your own soul out from its enclosure, you can be your own.

But for now when the targets fall with their lives you're not even theirs, you're the past's- maybe that's all anyone ever is, products of what they experienced and did, maybe that's better than what all of them deserve or maybe it's worse- no. Nothing is the worst and you could make yourself stand it even if it was.

You close your eyes, slowly tilting your head back, when you open them the sun is still there, somewhere to the side where it projects its scalded touch downward in descent. Its glow is reflecting small colors in strands of your hair. You wonder if the pieces of dead skin cells glittering dully under the light would look so untamed if they were anyone else's. You think if you shot at the sun you would never reach it and even if you did it wouldn't notice, its importance would surpass your directness. It wouldn't care and it would dissolve the bullet the way nameless floating matter vanishes in outer space, the way you have to desensitize yourself, one who deserves suffering doesn't have the right to feel it and anyway if you're going to continue you need to remember how to forget-

But not so much. After all, if you forget you can't know who you are and if you're standing over the casualty that was you- you shot her down and now she won't stop haunting from the inside, none of them do, but you know her and she may have gotten close to them but now she can't-

"It's time," you hear and wonder if you're just imagining him at first, of course not, though. The harshest experiences don't need to be imagined. Time for- everything and the end of the world and the making of a new one-

"…you're going to…destroy this region now," you don't even ask it. You don't have to. You know all he's got to do is put down his hands and take off part of the world but he acts like it's the entire world but he talks like it's both old news and the whole universe and you can tell he thinks you're no better than he is and maybe that's all true. There are different ways to be wrong. And you know you don't have to put gloves on or wear a watch to know there isn't always an order but when there is it's like nothing anyone's made before-they want order because they see patterns the way people fall lifeless and someone is left standing but clearly- _clearly- _when they burn and bring the end, take the world and see just how strong it is, they don't see it close like you do.

Everything's a target, everything's open and because of people like you the only safe places are long gone and you get used to the red marks over your eyes- will it move before you can or is this all a not- equivalent exchange?

"You know," he tells you, in that tone (full of advice but what's the gain in that?)- you look over. Still he's wrong in one sense. Your eyes look nothing like his. Even though you've both got killer's eyes. Yours don't move as you wait. "You still look like you regret this." You didn't notice until he walked closer but you can see your reflection in his eyes. You're shades of blue and black, like a sky filled with smoke. But you're see through. Glazed, like glass. Two of you look back. If you close your eyes they'll still be there waiting for sight.

"It goes deeper," you don't expect him to understand what you meant at all and maybe you don't want him to. You'd both still be the same as who you were. One of your hands hangs limply by your side but the other grips so hard to the gun you feel it inside.

"I'm sure it does with you," it does with you, it dies with you, he says pointedly. You are still in his eyes and you wonder if he sees himself in yours or if he's not even paying close attention or if you don't reflect. You nod slowly but sharply, like your head's being pulled. "You do remember them, don't you. But you don't want to." His mouth is a straight line and you can't tell whether or not something is bothering him or if he just doesn't care. Maybe it's both, they say he's insane but you don't disagree but he can't be so much more out of his mind than you are can he?

You look away but you can't close your eyes. There's always so much more when you do, behind your eyes. You want to put your hand over _her_ face inside of you so she doesn't see at the same time you do. She has your name and body and mind and uses your eyes but she's not what you are and you'll never have her soul as your own again.

"Remember…?" you echo to yourself. You remember the first one and you didn't waste, and you didn't get closer but it didn't seem real, it was just too quick and too exact. You remember when you- she?- lived but not when she switched to you. It wasn't one moment. "They're still here." But you assume everyone knows that and doesn't want to. There's sand under your fingernails and mouth. Maybe if you lie down the sand will mix in the blood, never equivalent. "Right now." Does he feel them? He feels a lot, you can tell. But you're not sure, no one is, and maybe that's why he wins. He must feel them somehow, they're on his hands, in yours. They're his sense, they're your movement.

He stares at you, not exactly questioningly, but as if he's seeing something that he isn't meant to. Silent, expecting you to continue, you see him and the smoke in the air and there's so much to focus on at once but that's what you took on so you do- "you talk about…remembering people in your head. Seeing their faces, and when they look at you look back and never look away. But they don't look back at me," you say all at once and wonder if this is just you, wonder if this is your specific task- it should be, maybe. It should be something. "They're always with me but I don't always see them. They don't always look at me. They stay at my back. So I can tell where they are and that they see me and feel me and know they're always there." You'll never be rid of them and they'll never be rid of you, they must suffer what you've done to them- "making yourself forget, and remembering. It's like the symbols on your hands. But it's- it's not," you don't even bother looking at him anymore, "it's not the sun and moon, or destruction and creation. It's not one thing or the other. There's the fire and desert but look at all the ashes." They're right lodged in front of her eyes right where she can see them-

"Cadet…" he says to you but you barely hear and all you hear is- is- "you understand now, don't you. That you can't go back. You understand better than the others but-"

"No," you tell him. "I always did." You just didn't think of it that way did you, or didn't you, it's so hard to tell when you know what's there but can't quite see it. He looks like he's surprised but not too much. At least you can understand people- see, you've had to, and if they don't understand you then they'll never really have you- "you can't remember the past if it's not staying in the past. It's more than a memory then." Your eyes suddenly widen but you've known it all along. And your face freezes- you don't even notice he's been staring close at you. But you don't shrink back anymore. You wonder what he sees when he looks at you- he's most likely less judgmental than you are but then again neither of you have that right, he doesn't know the depths and lengths of what you are, or even see it that way-

"That….is true," he says, narrowing his eyes as if he's deep in thought about what you said. Once you saw him and Mr. Mustang from a distance and there was an Ishvalan sniper and you saw him and isn't it funny how you saved the two of them don't you remember doesn't he remember not to forget the ones who save you either way this is it isn't it either way you remember yourself- "if you don't realize it you'll be bound to it instead of coexisting with it. Remembering it isn't a sentence, Cadet. It's a responsibility." 

No, it's both- no it's so much more than that-

You look away over the dunes of sand and the villages and you don't even know how long you've been looking until the smoke and debris come around and you're not hit but it encircles you and that's all right- there are figures in the fire created by the destruction, each one of them seems to vanish to somewhere, and the smoke fills your eyes but you don't care- and from far away there are targets but you pull the trigger and from the smoke walks- the way _you _used to be but you're not her anymore and you never will be again and maybe you never were in the first place and you _remember,_ burning alive in that house with her pressed to your heart and you needed each other to survive, both sides, and if you don't accept this sacrifice you'll never move forward and if that's what you deserve you can accept that but you've got to get forward first- someone has to-

Her face wears all that you had covered and her eyes open, staring into yours, _will you forget me? _And you're glad she never knew you as you are for too long, and the smoke drifts her closer, black dress and coat and lowered eyes, and you get a close look at her face- clear but her eyes are yours and you'll never get rid of those of course but you have to keep her moving down so you can move forward, and you don't even notice until the sounds go off that you're shooting her, the holes burn and she reaches to you as she rises, her hand just out of your reach, and her eyes silently flow into yours- she evaporates into smoke that is almost tangible, enough to touch you and say to you _I know you can remember what you need to. I don't want to forget. _And if you don't do this then you will- _I can't apologize, _you tell her, _but this is what I can do _– she raises her hands as she turns deeper shades of smoke and history, and you won't forget, you can't-

The noises of the gun stayin your arms, resounding so hard you can tell they'll never stop going off, one after another until it's just one clanging, and she falls into you- girl and monster and ghost all in one- and you feel ashes like wings at your back, cold and hardened , and they meld but she tears them off for you, before they spread you apart, and you've been on your knees, and you pick yourself up and the wings fall to dust and maybe you do to for a moment for forever inside and they're all still there and that's the price you pay for having these own eyes, for moving, for not forgetting.

They gesture from the corner of your eyes, and true to your name, as the flames reach higher and the screaming drowns, you see _everything._

_X_x

(So soon a whole city is destroyed. No wonder you think, they fear you. Not because of your results, humans have been destroying each other's progress in the name of progress for eternity. Because of what measures you take, though- even you are not immune to its disastrous consequences but you can stand yourself and the destruction's carnal desire for flesh and material. No one is immune. Even to a sleek bullet or straying inferno or waving sword, you can escape, but not from everything. It's all, in its own way, beautiful, and you've explained it but the words don't always describe the feeling.

It's, for the time being, done, this city. You watch the cadet- trigger heavy and possibly repressed both at once, that one, but at least she somewhat acknowledges it. She fires again and again and at first you looked to see if you could spot her target- those Ishvalan snipers are definitely relentless- but you saw none. Or you didn't see what she did. Anyone would say there was nothing there. Your eyes remember, hers detect. Strengths have flaws. Flaws have weakness. Weaknesses own more than strengths do. You see her head in her hands and as she rises up standing the fires in the dark illuminate her hollow face, she's unblinking as she stares forward and if you waved your hands in front of her eyes , out displaying their bodied symbols, you would be shocked if she reacted soon. Whatever she sees you don't think you can ever completely understand- this is beyond guilt or sympathy or things you don't have room for. You understand memories but these are hers and what is hers is something you can never claim. Your fingers absently brush dirt off your face as her eyes, amber and widened, shift.

"She remembers me," she tells the desert, tells the dead and living, "and I had to take her in so maybe one day she may rest."

This wasn't what you had expected. You're almost thankful she hasn't become emotional-

_The only reason they call you insane is because you make _perfect _sense- _

A wave of heat radiates and her eyes close. "You were right…but I was too," she says and it seems to last a thousand years and the whole world burns, feeding off memories and present secrets. She thinks this is a punishment, you know that, at least- but you don't know what else someone like that could think. You don't know what to agree with or disagree with- all you know is you'll remember her. She didn't forget herself as she faced herself.)

_Xx_

You don't know what words can give but with the end of the world written on your back someone's bound to be reading it and if you're following someone into hell you suppose no one else should be dragged in but she'll still be there, you will-

You have to keep going and the desert seems directionless, but you don't need to get directions, you'll take your own now- nothing can be undone so you'll _do something- _

Anything-

You push back hair off your face, and gaze at the obstructed moon, smoke blurring its clarity, but you, you're blurred too- the ground of sand is marked with your feet. It expands, covered in destruction and further on it's wide and freed and further on it's barren and further on you can't see but someone must.

She must rest sometimes but you never will.

"When I looked into your face, Cadet.." he tells you, but you know, you know- "I saw. I saw that you remembered and held on."

"No, I know what you saw," the moon is alive, it wants the sun to come back out so they can come for each other so they can even each other out even as they cancel each other out, blinding each other, playing forgiveness as if they don't need each other. He saw you but he doesn't know what else he saw, what you saw- anyone can say that. He doesn't see the rest the way she can't feel it all or does she? You look to the moon and almost see the sun inside, almost sees _her _made of fire, reaching out her arm. "I feel them at my back, but it's not a memory. It will never be over…" you look to the fire and can almost taste it inside, consuming, flying through your eyes and making you see. You talk to the sun because it's still there somewhere, destroying itself, lighting the universe. You open your mouth and can almost feel words from someone else. Someone who was once you. You close your eyes, the burning in the dark against your eyelids, red on gray and your head sways along. "I had to burn her to set her free from me."


End file.
